by Sarah Ellen
The dawn.
I feel it coming.
Like the beginnings of a headache light seeps into the east.
Like the light behind my eyelids.
Like the release of a long held breath it is a relief and a burden.
It is a promise it is a threat.
I have not slept.
I have counted the stars on the ceiling and taken careful census of the bumps on the wall.
The loom of my bedsheets slowly rejected my body the shuttle so I combed woolly thoughts instead.
I spun a thousand dreams without batting blinking winking an eye.
I have not slept.
I have not slept and it heightens my awareness to the speeding of each second and the motion of those stationary objects that certainly do not dance by day.
Each hour is a tick mark on my skull wall.
I serve my sentence in a round room of grayness and very little light by which I play with my perceptions.
It is a strange game.
I have not slept.
I count sleep like eye-lashes between my fingers something to wish on and blow away.
Like grains of sand available in abundance but asphyxiating weighting my limbs.
I have not slept.
The sky brightens tightens my headache like the strings of a cello.
A dry alto hum.
The room is warm with restlessness and I feel fettered.
Tethered and hooded an uneasy falcon.
A canary in a mine shaft to gauge the availability of air.
Predatory and fragile I paper my own cage.
Pin up bits of clutter and fabric notes numbers postcards and pictures.
A calendar to scratch off each stale day staid night without slumber.
I have not slept.
So soon it will be day time to meet faces whose eyes know no deprivation whose skin is dew-bright whose heads are not heavily leaden between their palms.
So soon.
I have not slept.